One of the most common niggles I hear about the HTC Hero is its weak battery life. To be fair, the Hero isn’t the only phone to suffer from this. As smartphones have got more powerful and connect to the Internet, there’s no surprise to see battery life taking a hit.
A number of third party battery manufacturers have sprung up to cater for this growing market. One of the most prominent (and the only one I really trust) is a company called Mugen Power. It provides batteries of different capacities for pretty much most phones on the market today. They were kind enough to send over two HTC Hero batteries for us to test out. This included the 1550mAh and 3200mAh capacity batteries. Click through for our review of both batteries.
Taking each in turn, we first look at the larger capacity 3200mAh battery. The battery arrived with a white and black cover (the latter included in some bubble wrap). There was also some paperwork that should be read before using the battery. It suggests that you need to charge the battery for 12 hours for the first time.
The battery comes in quite simple packaging. The battery sits in the white cover and this has a small piece of sponge behind it to prevent it getting scratched in transit.
The usual warnings and warranty information is placed on the back of the packaging. The battery comes with a 6-month warranty.
As the codename (HLI-HEROXL) suggests the 3.7V 3200mAh battery is quite big and won’t fit into the existing housing. This is the reason why Mugen Power provides a back cover to account for the larger battery.
It’s difficult to get a sense of how much thicker this battery is when just looking at it alone. We have some comparison pictures later in the review that give you a better idea of the size.
Mugen Power provides back casings in both black and white colours. If you have a pink HTC Hero you’ll be out of luck in getting the casing to match.
Both covers have protective plastic on the back to ensure that they do not scratch during transit.
The plastic used is matte and matches the rest of the HTC Hero.
The plastic covers have been manufactured to a high standard and have the right size holes and fits the phone well.
With the battery attached you can get an idea how much the 3200mAh battery sticks out over the original HTC Hero battery.
Without the cover attached you can see how much the 3200mAh battery protrudes from the back. This is why Mugen Power has provided the large back door covers.
Once the back cover is attached, it fits very snugly to the rest of the phone. It can be a bit too sung, requiring quite a bit of force to remove. However, given the size I’d rather it be a tight rather than loose fit.
As mentioned previously, the covers have been manufactured to a high quality. All of the holes for the power input and headphone sockets are the right sizes and nothing feels loose.
This even extends to the volume control. It can take some getting used to as the volume control is on the phone part of the handset, rather than the back cover. I often found myself pressing the cover initially to change volume.
Whilst the HTC Hero doesn’t come with a lens cover, given the depth of the back casing, a lens cover is built into it. This was probably a necessary design decision to ensure dust doesn’t enter the lens. A simple slider switch opens and closes the lens cover.
The picture below shows the original HTC Hero back casing (on the left side) adjacent to the casing provided by Mugen Power. As you can see below, both the colour and texture of the plastic matches the original very well.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Any idea if there are any quality covers that would work with the largest of these batteries? I’ve got a nice Flexishield (which I think you also recommended) but would like something as substantial to protect the Hero if I bought this new bulky battery. Thanks!
Don’t know of any covers that work with it, but I bought the bulkier 3200mAh battery recently and have to say it does exactly what it says on the tin – lasts about three times as long as the standard battery. It takes aa bit of getting used to, but sits nicely in the hand.
hi just wondering can you get hold of pink battery covers hard plastic hero g2 for front and back casing I see you do in black and white. any joy with the salmon pink or not do you know where I can buy one from at all searched everywhere but only the gel ones which I didnt want ta Janet
Honestly, these tests’ results aren’t even 15 percent scientific. You can hardly call this a test at all. While the “I’ve just played some games and made some calls” approach may give you some very rough estimate of how much more capacity does te beefy one have, you absolutely shouldn’t come to any conclusions regarding the original 1350mAh vs. the 1550mAh one. Using your methodology, the Mugen Power 1550mAh may in reality have smaller capacity than the original one just as well. I’m not telling it has, just that this kind of test doesn’t prove otherwise in any way. If you want to get some real, comparable figures you could discharge the battery using the R/C hobby charger with the discharge function and some makeshift adapter which would give you the real mAh output. I’ve done this before and it’s the minimum to differentiate the “guess” from “test”. No offence, I believe in your most sincere intentions, but if you’re going to “test” the batteries which nominal capacities differ only by some 15% using the “done hour of this and a little of that” approach, just don’t do this at all, plesase, as all you can achive this way is confusion.
Thanks for your feedback Zbig. I did think long and hard about how to test the battery, ideally it would be good if I could just loop a call until it died, but that wasn’t practical. I also thought of looping video, but I wanted to make use of the radio and other wireless parts of the phone. In the end, I just went for the real world approach. You’re right, it’s not scientific, but my mobile habits are pretty consistent on a day-today basis and thought at least gives an idea of outperformance.
Hello!
I have the Sprint HTC Touch Pro 2. When getting the new 4500mah battery, i want to know if i cqan fond the cover in the back of the phone. The one with the multiple holes in it.
Nice review.
This will make my Hero look more muscular and I’ll be glad if I have one of these sets.
I love my Hero and would just love it more if the battery would last longer, realy cool phone
oh man i would love one of these! Hero FTW!!
You could go for something in between the 2 – I picked up a 2200 mAh battery with back cover on ebay. Great battery life improvement and only slightly bulkier than the original
{ 1 trackback }